On Time Travel - Saikou no Jutsu: Tachyongiri (The greatest technique: Tachyon Strike)

There was once a young woman named Bright

Who traveled much faster than light

She went one day, in a relative way

And came back the previous night

     This was of the topics that was not discussed in film, even though they recited the poem in the beginning of the video. The idea of time dilation rests on relativity, and relativity to light. Since light is absolute and its speed does not change, it is made the standard entity for relativity. When you approach the speed of light, you become faster, obviously. But that also means that, if that is your normal speed, everything else is slow. So, the faster you go, the closer you get to the speed of light, and with that approach, everything else slower than or not as fast as you will seem to be, well, slow. Mathematically speaking, there is an inverse relationship between speed and the flow of time. The greater your speed, the slower the flow of time goes, in relation to our standard, absolute entity, light. So in theory, when the disparity between your speed and the speed of light hits zero (not that it will anyway, :p), time will stop, because essentially you are a god and is the fastest being in existence. Now, if there is an inverse relationship, what if the equilibrium is broken, and you travel faster than the speed of light?

     Let me reiterate. As your speed approaches the speed of light, the flow of time will approach zero. What if we exceed that speed? Yes, that’s right. The flow of time will go negative. Meaning, from a forward flow, slowing down to a halt, we move to a reverse flow of time. Essentially, we can go back to the past when we exceed the speed of light (not that it’ll happen). Since it has already been thought of, a name has been coined for the hypothetical particles in the universe that exceed the speed of light: tachyons.

     However, there are a number problems to consider before you try viewing this as a viable form of time travel. Time is not the only value that changes as you approach the speed of light. Mass approaches infinity as the velocity approaches zero. That means that you’ll get heavier and heavier, and would therefore require greater and greater amounts of energy in order to move you. Even at infinite energy, it wouldn’t be able to move an infinite mass. You would be at a standstill. Another, more morbid fact of lightspeed travel is the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction. As you approach the speed of light, your length approaches zero. This might be fun for individuals with suicidal ideation and manic-depressive disorder (or demigods), but this is essentially lethal to any mortal. Think of being converted into a blindingly fast, really wide, flat disk of immense mass. Traveling with light would turn you into the Ultimate Killer Frisbee, capable of slicing planets in half and ripping a hole through galaxies. Hell, even Cerberus wouldn’t even dare catch you.

     With all this in mind, let’s stick to the String theory.

     Anyway, I think if you had the ability to convert weapons in to tachyons, that would beat traveling at sonic speeds. You would be able to beat your nemesis without moving, because you already attacked him in the past. Sounds complicated, but I think it'd be awesome. Saikou no Jutsu! Tachyongiri! Hyaa~

John Paul N. Ada

2010-46567